


Prompt: A Choice That Is Not A Choice

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [152]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Based on AIW rumours, Codependency, F/M, Infinity Gauntlet, Romance, Trauma, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 09:10:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13544193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: After prison - after the straitjacket - everything outside leaves Wanda feeling exposed, like a raw nerve. The bruises fresh from battle, the blisters from the burning contacts of her collar are not even completely healed when Steve comes to break them out, and she finds herself tucking into the corner of the Quinjet as Steve flies them out.The whole world feels, once more, like a threat.





	Prompt: A Choice That Is Not A Choice

**Author's Note:**

> For mermaid-motels! Written for a prompt readable on my tumblr [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/170387635280/prompt-thanos-making-wanda-choose-between-pietro).

 

 **i.**  
After prison - after the straitjacket - everything outside leaves Wanda feeling exposed, like a raw nerve. The bruises fresh from battle, the blisters from the burning contacts of her collar are not even completely healed when Steve comes to break them out, and she finds herself tucking into the corner of the Quinjet as Steve flies them out.

The whole world feels, once more, like a threat.

 

* * *

 

 **ii.**  
Wanda tucks herself into corners, wraps herself in shawls and blankets. Small spaces still make her panic - they always will, after the shell - but open spaces and exposed skin leave her feeling just as at risk.

Wakanda is safety, but none of them linger lest they cause their kind provider trouble, leaving as soon as it becomes safe to do so. Wanda folds herself small, slips across borders, and lives as a street-witch once more.

 

* * *

 

 **iii.**  
There are things she does not tell others. Of course there are. Everyone has some small secret they tuck close, hold high within their hearts and vow to never let out.

Except: once upon a time there had been someone she could tell these high-held secrets of her heart to. Once upon a time she had shared all things with a brother born at much the same time as her - twins, born together and meant to die so.

But now, now Pietro is gone from her, and she must learn to keep these secrets tucked up into herself as everyone else has all their lives.

To keep a secret from others, that had always been simple. That was how she and Pietro had lived for long years, telling others barely anything but between one another, sharing everything.

Now, to keep these high-held secrets of her heart is easy… until she realises there are none she may tell them to.

There is no outlet anymore. Just building and building pressure in her chest. 

 

* * *

 

 **iv.**  
“Grief,” says Vision, floating gently down to sit next to her. She is not so terribly surprised that he has found her - if anyone could it is him, who bears the stone that birthed her blood-and-burgundy powers into the world - but she is startled that he would so readily sit beside her, after she had shoved him through structure and soil. His hand rests gently on her spine as she slowly stifles her sobs.

Below them, the street whirrs on.

“I am sorry,” Vision says. His mind, beside her, glows in soft green cell-shapes under magenta neurons gradually building up and around the orange databanks of his thoughts. “For…,” his mind flickers over so many things before he finally sounds out the words. “For many things. I should have spoken to you, rather than said nothing and hoping you would stay. I am sorry that… that I did not understand your concerns as well as I thought I did, and that I tried to make light of things when that was not what you needed.” 

His hand against her back is cool and soft, sturdy but gentle and slowly her breathing eases. 

“And I am sorry that you lost him,” he says, and Wanda draws a breath that for long moments she does not let out. “I did not… I do not think I understood loss, until you all were gone from us. I did not understand how much it must have been for you, to have him no longer.”

She sighs out her breath in one long shiver and leans against his side. With him here she does not need to worry that she might accidentally fall, that her scarlet, still touched by fear, might falter and let her fall. So she leans into his side, lets his hand slip from her spine to her side, and gladly takes the comfort he is so tentatively offering. 

 

* * *

 

 **v.**  
She hides. She slips in and out of crowds, hides her face with a ducked head, a pulled up hood, a pulled low cap. She becomes invisible, a void in the crowd. In the summer she wears wide-brimmed hats, strips her rings from her fingers so her hands are bare and ordinary and hide the scarlet she could pull forwards at a moments notice.

Under the radar. She has lived so much of her life under the radar that it’s almost simple to slip beneath it again. These clothes, that stance, that accent. Suddenly she becomes no one, and no one notices or cares.

She threads her rings back onto her fingers, Vision sitting behind her on a rumpled bed. 

“I wonder, sometimes,” he says. “If this will all last. If all it takes is for me to not understand-”

Wanda turns and glances at him. “I do not think that is a worry,” she says, before threading rings back onto her fingers. “Besides,” she says. “You now know what will happen if you should ever lie to me again.”

“You will leave,” he says. “By any means necessary.”

Wanda threads the last ring onto her thumb and turns to face him. Vision’s smile is soft and warm.

 

* * *

 

 **vi.**  
She wonders if Stark knows. That Vision - his son-and-also-grandson via different paths - follows her around the world, finds time to spend with her when not back at base or managing a mission. Follows her around the world, through countries and cities, into cafes and into bed.

She wonders if Rhodes knows. If any of the team does.

It almost makes her laugh, now, to think at the state of the team. She wonders what Pietro would have thought, to know how easy it was to destroy the team, in the end. 

She thinks, now, that the team would have destroyed itself all on it’s own, if they had let it be. All it would have taken was one disagreement turning into an argument turning into a war.

Fear set loose into Tony Stark’s mind may have helped, she thinks, but she knows just as well that the team might have fallen apart on it’s own at a moment’s notice.

 

* * *

 

 **vii.**  
“What should we do?” she asks, leaning against Vision. Her hands rub uncertainly over her stomach. This was… she had never been prepared for this. Planning for all possibilities, yes, but this had never  _been_  a possibility, not for her, not for years. Poor diet, pitiful life, the streets a living hell, and trauma every moment reoccurring and reoccurring. She knew what came of that. How the body responded to that. To grow up so, in such consistent uncertainty she did not think- 

But all the same. 

 “I-” Vision looks as shocked as she feels, surprise etched on his features. His mind is stuttering over the idea, over the mere  _concept_.

“You are biological,” Wanda says softly, touching her fingertips to his. “I remember. Doctor Cho mixed cells with vibranium to make you, you are not only metal.”

“Y-yes,” Vision says. “But-” 

“You did not think it was a possibility for you,” Wanda says. Vision’s hand shifts against hers, interlinks their fingers. “It is funny,” she says, quite seriously. “I did not think it was a possibility for me, either.” 

 

* * *

 

 **viii.**  
Then the aliens come.

Then Vision is attacked.

Then, Wanda must once more chose what she can fight for.

 

* * *

 

 **ix.**  
“He is gone,” says Thanos. “You waste your time.” Wanda does not move from her vigil at Vision’s side. Her hand does not let go of his.

“Not gone,” Wanda says. “He is… dreaming.” She glances back to him, at the gauntlet at his side. “He will wake as soon as the stone is returned.”

“That,” Thanos says, “Is not the deal I offer you.”

 

* * *

 

 **x.**  
Her choices are not choices at all.

She may give up Vision, give up her child - her dearest hope that she had not ever thought would be fulfilled - and have her brother back.

Or, she may stay at Vision’s side, stay away from the battle and maybe, when all this is over, make a life and a new family out of the babe she carries and her own body in whatever might remain of the world

So small a chance. So much she must give, or have taken from her to regain even a little. How much has she lost, in all her few years? Her parents. Her home. Her childhood. Her country. Her brother. Her vengeance. Her freedom.

Now: Her lover. Her child. The whole and entire world beneath her feet.

She looks up at Thanos, and does not let go of Vision’s hand. “You would take from me,” she says. “When you have  _already_ taken from me. I will not pay your price for so small a gain.”

Thanos bends his head, looks her close in the eye.

“But this,” he says, “Is not your choice.”

 

* * *

 

 **xi.**  
And her brother spins out of nothing.

 

* * *

 

 **xii.**  
“Give up your child,” Thanos says, “Give up your child, and I will give you your brother. Or, you stay away, and know that if you try to fight me, you will see your brother die again.”

Pietro is trapped in a bubble, pulled behind a shield, and he is gone.

 

* * *

 

 **xiii.**  
When Clint finds her she is silent and shaken. 

“Wanda,” he says, his hand gentle on her shoulder. She does not let go of Vision’s hand. “Wanda, we need you.”

It is all Wanda can do to shake her head.

 

* * *

 

 **xiv.**  
Her brother is at risk. Her  _brother._  All she has ever wanted from the moment that he was torn from her and he is  _there,_  just beyond reach and-

But he may not be real. This she can anchor herself on, pure and uncertain doubt. She did not get a firm look at the mind of the Pietro that Thanos spun out of nothingness. She did not have time to see with certainty that it was  _him,_  her brother whom loved more than anything.

But she dares not risk him. She does not think she can handle having her brother taken from her again.

“I can’t-” Wanda says, when the they reach the others. “I can’t fight this, not-” She turns looks at Vision’s body hovering behind her, tagging along in a net of her scarlet. “Please,” she says, looking to Steve. “Don’t ask me to fight in this.”

Steve looks at her, looks at Vision, and the slow-scabbing gulf in his brow and slowly nods. “All right,” he says. “All right.”

“Stay at the edge of the battle,” Tony suggests. “When we get the gauntlet off him we’ll need someone to put the stone back into Vision’s skull, right? You’ve been checking on him and keeping him here with your scarlet, and with your scarlet you won’t have to touch the stone to put it back in. Can you do that?”

She looks at Tony, uncertain, doubting, but unwilling to accept nothing as an answer. 

If she does this, agrees to this, then Pietro will be safe when she enters the battle. This, this she can do, and she jerks a nod.

 

* * *

 

 **xv.**  
There is the battle. Wanda stays in the Quinjet. She stays put, she sits at Vision’s side, she holds his hand in hers and remembers why she is doing this: that she can protect Vision from further harm. That she can seem him returned when they win. That she can ensure that Pietro doesn’t die, because she cannot see him dead again. That she protects her child, the only certain family of her own she knows she has and that she knows is truly real.

She screws her eyes shut, and presses her face to her and Vision’s joined hands.

So much taken. So much held over her head.  _If you cannot save people are you even a hero? If they die on your watch, how much is your failure? If you fail, why should you be called a hero? Why should you try?_

Childhood taken, and parents and home. Safety taken, and peace and comfort. Vengeance taken, and city and brother. Purpose taken, and freedom when she protested it.

Brother taken-given. Child threatened. Lover gone.

She stretches her mind out - she can feel Vision’s beside her, dreaming still, but that is not what she seeks - and seeks to find the distant mind of her lost brother.

A lost brother she is more and more certain is well and truly returned to her.

Pietro imprisoned. Pietro kept from her. Pietro’s wellbeing held over her head, and her child’s head, and her lover’s head, to try to keep her friends and her almost-family from winning.

Wanda has always been her most powerful when she is angry.

 

* * *

 

 **xvi.**  
Later, they will not be able to say what exactly happened. 

Later, truly, no one quite cares, not when there is the simple glory of victory at their hands.

Later, no one thinks too much on it.

 

* * *

 

 **xvii.**  
Wanda is angry. Wanda is very angry, Wanda is angry as she has not been in years and it boils in her belly, boils in her body, boils in her bones until the scarlet seeps out of her skin like a mist of blood.

Far across the battlefield, a shield shatters into a thousand shards and a blur of blue enters play.

 

* * *

 

 **xviii.**  
“What the  _fuck_ was that?”

“Doesn’t matter, focus fire!”

And suddenly Thanos’ gauntleted hand is without a gauntlet.

 

* * *

 

 **xix.**  
“Wanda,” says a voice, and it is a voice Wanda has dreamed of, over and over.

Her brother stands in the open door, hair a ruffle of white and grey and black, and in his hands is the gauntlet.

“Pietro-”

Metal weighs her hands down in a moment, and she can feel her brother’s mind speeding faster and faster outside. In her hands is the gauntlet.

Wanda calls scarlet, and pries the mind stone lose.

 

* * *

 

 **xx.**  
Wanda slips the gauntlet on. It is….

There is power there, as she flexes her fingers. Like her own, but different.

Wanda’s eyes glow in a myriad colours as she bends to kiss a slow-healing Vision’s brow.

 

* * *

 

 **xxi.**  
Pietro is a blur of blue, War Machine and Iron Man are flying about and hovering high above Thor is calling so much lightning he glows in a vast blue nimbus. Below, on the ground, T’Challa and the Dora Milaje, Steve and Bucky, Natasha and Scott, Spiderman and the aliens all pitch in.

Wanda flexes a gauntleted fist.

 _“You,”_  Thanos says, when he spots her, spots the gauntlet on her hand, shrunk by way of her will and it’s own power. “You know-”

Wanda raises her hand, clenches her fist, and he chokes.

 

* * *

 

 **xxii.**  
Pietro runs. He is a blur of blue, fast as anything, dodging around the lightning that drips from Thor and heads for the giant purple man who is clutching desperately at his throat.

There’s a lot of speed behind him now.

He punches, and skin tears.

 

* * *

 

 **xxiii.**  
“Wanda,” he says, and his hands are fluttering around her shoulders, still shaking in blue and the gauntlet falls from her hand as she rests her head against his shoulder. “I’m here, it’s all right, everything is all right.”

She doesn’t know how to tell him, all the sense of loss and grief, the re-finding of purpose, how much time has passed, about her and Vision, but he doesn’t ask, just settles his hands on her shoulders, slips his arms around her and lets her relax against him.

“I’m to be an uncle?” he asks, when she finally pulls back. “Have you and Vision discussed names yet?”

 

* * *

 

 **xxiv.**  
Vision is slow to wake, but Wanda’s scarlet feels every inching moment as he claws his way back to consciousness. The others drop in at various times - Pietro most often, hovering at her shoulder, glad to be back, leeching knowledge of all that has happened from her mind whenever they are near enough he can do so. Steve and Natasha drop in as well, even Stark, who seems most confused by the idea that Wanda and Vision might be having offspring.

Wanda stays most often, and the day Vision finally wakes, everyone is there.

“Did we-” he asks, half dazed still, and dazed still more when Wanda leans forwards to kiss his cheek.

“We won,” she says.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!


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